Martin, Shannon

Mr. Clary

I attended Campbell University, where I received my B.A. in English and M. Ed. I also attended law school at Elon University in Greensboro, NC. I have a 2nd Degree Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do. In my spare time, I am either on a boat or pier fishing with my dog, Carly.

I am a big fan of creative writing and have tons of prompts and storyboard projects that are sure to get my students engaged in the content. My students should never be reading just for the sake of reading.

I see an ELA classroom like a big garden. At the beginning of the year, I am given a handful of different seeds that must be planted and nurtured until the summer harvest. I may not know what the flower will turn out to be until it blooms. Some buds may need more light and hardier soil than others. If I give each seed enough care and room to grow, then I will come out with something spectacular: a bouquet to hand to the next year's teacher. I put a lot effort into my garden and want to be proud of my year's labors. A student can always bloom brighter, strive for better, and write stronger so long as that seed is nurtured. An ELA classroom is the perfect environment to thrive in.

My favorite scientific concept, even though I am far from being able to understand it, is organic chemistry. It is the science of breaking down real-world substances into their most basic parts and modelling them into formulas that represent something better. It is the blueprint for the entire world that we live in. Math and science cannot get more real than that!

I am most thankful for the tools that allow me to present, edit, and display information from the Internet. I believe that the Internet is the greatest invention and repository of knowledge since the Library of Alexandria. Any way to present the information gleaned from that source can only further human progress, and its use in the classroom is paramount to a successful future.

I will tap into student curiosity via collaboration with my colleagues to create writing prompts that connect to what students are learning in their other classes. There should not be such separation between academic subjects. We are a team and it is our duty to come together.

Mathematics is unavoidable in daily life. It affects everything people do and strive for. It has affected and will continue to affect history. We, as thirteen colonies, were taxed without representation until a group of people found and solved that variable in 1776. We would not be the United States without Algebra!